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CarDekho SEA, a Singapore-based auto financing services platform, has raised $60 million in equity, valuing the company at more than $300 million, from Navis Capital Partners and Dragon Fund. This is the first round of external financing, following an earlier investment of $40 million from the parent company, CarDekho Group.
The company, the Southeast Asia unit of Indian conglomerate CarDekho, will use the funding to support its further expansion in Southeast Asia, focusing on the used car and bike financing industry in Indonesia and the used car financing sector in the Philippines. – said the founder and president of CarDekho in an interview with TechCrunch.
Kumar told TechCrunch that acquiring a used car financing or insurance brokerage platform in Indonesia and the Philippines could be one of its strategies to increase its presence in the region.
“We have some assets lined up in terms of what we will look at. You may hear something like that in a month or two… We will actively look at acquisition activities. The idea is not completely organically built. So we will look at some inorganic acquisitions,” Kumar said. As we build our business in the Southeast.”
Founded in 2020, the company already has a significant presence in Indonesia (Auto Indonesia) and the Philippines (Carmudi Philippines and Zigwheels Philippines). It is also present in a few other Southeast Asian markets, such as Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and is looking to expand into new markets in 2026.
Kumar explained that the company initially had a joint venture partner in Indonesia, but later bought out the entire local partner, becoming the 100% owner of the entity between 2019 and 2020. The company’s acquisition spree continues as it acquired Carmudi, which operates in the Philippines. Kumar explained, Indonesia and Thailand, in 2021 to expand in Southeast Asia.
Unlike its peers, CarDekho SEA acts as a one-stop aggregator of car financing services. Its main competitor was Moladin, which has now transformed into a full-fledged lending company.
CarDekho SEA highlights its advantages, including technology-driven loan procedures, asset-light market approach with no credit risk, wide network of used car dealers and dealers, and strong collaboration with financial institutions. CarDekho SEA will use AI and machine learning solutions to reduce fraud and credit risks and provide more data to its financing partners to succeed in a changing technological environment.
Since its launch, the company has experienced significant growth, with over 200,000 disbursements and over $1 billion in loans. This represents a 50-fold increase in gross merchandise value over the past three years and partnerships with more than 50 financiers and 20,000 merchants and retail agents.
Its primary customers are small-scale used car dealers, many of whom have fewer than ten cars in stock or no physical showroom at all. “Because they are small-scale, financiers often find it difficult to serve them directly,” the CEO said. “Our platform aggregates demand from these individual traders, connecting them to a wide network of financiers and providing access to a diverse range of financial products for themselves and their clients – products that were previously inaccessible to them.”
The company is in an expansion phase, generating revenues of up to $50 million annually through commissions per loan with financiers.
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